How do I link my ALMA user account to my account at a trusted institution?

Posted by Sarah Wood, Last modified by Anand Crossley on 13 May 2015 02:40 PM

The ALMA Science Portal allows users to link their ALMA accounts to an account at a trusted institution. This can be done on the Science Portal profile page, by clicking on the "Account linking" tab. Trusted institutions are currently limited to ESO and NRAO. A user with linked accounts can login to their trusted institution and then gain access to the ALMA Science Portal without a subsequent login. In other words, ALMA will "trust" the login credentials of the trusted institution. (Currently, the converse is not true; when logged into the ALMA Science Portal, accessing an account at the trusted institution will require the normal, subsequent login.)

The ALMA help desk has been designed to take advantage of the account linkage, if it exists. The help desk will add a sidebar hyperlink that allows the user to access the help desk at the trusted institution (ESO or NRAO) quickly. In the future, other ALMA Science Portal tools will likely be designed to take advantage of the institutional linkage. Likewise, the trusted institution can also use the account linkage to enhance the ALMA user experience. The NRAO help desk in particular has done this by integrating the ALMA and NRAO Knowledgebase and by including ALMA results in the NRAO help desk search tool.